http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11227
Summary: Defective specular lighting support makes certain games hardly playable Product: Wine Version: 0.9.53. Platform: All OS/Version: All Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P2 Component: directx-d3d AssignedTo: wine-bugs@winehq.org ReportedBy: samurai_no_densetsu@yahoo.es
In this case Blade of darkness, suffer heavy performane issues when a specular lighting is draw on the screen, dropping framerate to 1fps or below on Direct3D modes, even at lower resolution modes like 640x480.
I can confirm that is a specular lighting issue, because one of the fixed D3D plugins that brings the game is for 3Dfx Voodoo 1 and 2 cards that didn't had hardware support for specular lighting, and with these game runs flawless, in the other side the rest of the D3D plugins runs at full framerate except when a specular lighting is drawn in the screen, like when you're looking at a torch, then is when framerate fall to its minimun.
Also older wine versions complaints about specular lighting drawing, latest one (0.9.53) suffer exactly the same problem of any other wine version I have tested with this game.
I add some wine logs